jueves, 30 de septiembre de 2010

Development for Africa

Africa is divided into 54 different countries, and as we all know is the poorest inhabited continent in the world being 25 of the countries ranked lowest among all the countries.
All this was cause due to the history of Africa (decolonization, corruption, despotism, etc.), but in the last few years, the world in general has been trying to help in Africa’s development even though its economy it’s still very low and its biggest problem. Some examples are Africa’s trade with China has multiplied by 10 since 2001, reaching over USD 100 billion in 2008.
As we said before, poverty is the main problem in Africa. Besides not being able to grow as a country, it also brings problems like violence, instability, hunger, etc. and if we don’t solve this problem first, it is going to be more difficult to star with other problems; for example we cannot star creating factories, etc. if people don’t have even money to eat. But there are not only catastrophes in Africa. Recently we can see that some parts of the continent have been growing very fast, like Sub-Saharan African countries Angola, Sudan, Malawi, etc.
The economic issue of Africa has been and it still is an important problem for both Africa and the world itself. Many attempts at solving Africa's poverty have been attempted, but few have had any great degree of success.
One of the solutions was that Africa’s countries could become self-sufficient countries. In 1982, The Lagos Plan of Action called for Africa as a whole to block imports from the rest of the world. Another aid was that foreign countries sent food to Africa. But some countries think that this is going to lead to a dependency of other countries.
A problem that now Africa has been trying to solve are the debts. Each year Africa sends more money to Western bankers in interest on its debts than it receives in foreign aid from these countries. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative was launched in 1996; in the 2000s, eligible countries began receiving debt relief.
The goals that are created to be accomplished by 2023 by The African Union are the creation of a free trade area, a customs union, a single market, a central bank, and a common currency.


Sierra Leone`s development for Africa

Sierra Leone as we all know is the third-lowest-ranked country on the Human Development Index and eighth-lowest on the Human Poverty Index with3/4 of its population living with less than $2 a day. This ranking tells us that Sierra Leone is a very poor country and it is very difficult for the governors of this country to try and help other countries while they are one of the reasons why Africa is underdeveloped. So because of this, all the contributions or most of them that Sierra Leone makes to Africa’s development is within the country’s development.
Sierra Leone`s economy got destroyed most of it in the civil war that lasted from 1991 to 2002. Since 2002,with the help of the USAID, they`ve tried to establish a democratic honest government that will eventually help them to create livelihood opportunities, improve food security, augment civic participation, and build capacity for health service delivery.
Another problem is the maternal and infant mortality rates that they are now the highest in the world, due to its malnutrition and poor health care. The USAID is training community health workers in different places to help the people in their country to have better health; they are also contributing in surgeries and medicines, etc.
A way of solving hunger problems, is by creating more jobs so that people can have more money, and as well as crating more food. The USAID is boosting the agriculture in Sierra Leone by bringing machines that helps with every process of agriculture as well as giving jobs to people who are really needed.
These are a lot of problems that Sierra Leone has, but we are going to start working one by one so that little by little we can build a democratic economical and social country. To have a better economy and society, Sierra Leone needs to find a way of creating jobs for the people, and this is the problem in which we are going to start working first.


Proposal
Sierra Leone is going to try to focus on 2 problems: education for teenagers that were involved in the civil wars, and the creation of a stronger and democratic country.
After all the conflicts in Sierra Leone, a lot of teenagers that ones participated in the war are now traumatizes, without a family a place to live and money. What we are going to do is try to give them and education, a foster family if its possible and a job which is something that we need to focus on, creating jobs for the people in Sierra Leone, so that they can be able to feed themselves and have money so that after a while they can be able to reintegrate with the people and be independent.
To achieve the goal of having a more democratic honest and better country we want to try and integrate people from first world countries like USA or France in the government so that with their help people that work in our government can learn from them and so that after 2 or 3 government periods our way of ruling the country can resemble to those of a first world country and the we can be able to manage our own government alone without corruption that is one of our main problems in the government

lunes, 27 de septiembre de 2010

CLIMATE CHANGES






1.    First of all; what is climate change?
Climate change or what we also call global warming is the result of changes in weather patterns due to increases to the Earth's average temperature. There are lots of things that can cause this change like fossil fuel, intensive agriculture, etc.
This problem that we are dealing with, we can say that it started being one more less 50 years ago, even though the Earth's climate has been changing over the last century.

Earths climate change is something that is happening in the whole word and that eventually if we don’t star acting will affect our environment, our communities and our economy.
2.    RECENT INTERNATIONAL EVENTS RELATED TO THE TOPIC
As I said before, this is something that involves the whole planet and because it can be such a threaten in the future there are lots of organizations that are already trying to solve the problem.
This problem shows in the rise of .76ºC Earth`s average surface temperature since 1850 caused by the CO2 and human activity which was discovered by the AR4 (Fourth Assessment Report) of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and that estimates that if we continuo the way we are in this century it will be rising from 1.8ºC to 4.0ºC rising till 6.4ºC in the worst case and it will cause catastrophic changes.
As I said before, there are organizations that are trying to work on this problem. An example is The European Union, who is now working to get a global agreement to control climate change and is taking domestic action to achieve substantial reductions in its own contribution as well as developing a European strategy for adapting to climate change. They also helped in the development of the two United Nations climate treaties, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, agreed in 1997. In 2007 EU leaders committed to transforming Europe into a highly energy-efficient, low carbon economy.



3.    DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COUNTRY´S ACTIONS OR DECLARATIONS ON THESE EVENTS (How has your country reacted to those events?)
Generally, Africa is more exposed to climate change because of the wide spread of poverty and unsustainable use of natural resources.
Sierra Leone in the pre-colonial era was known for its conductive atmosphere; but today, the country is facing big problems like agriculture, biodiversity and food security cause by climate changes, leading to hunger and poverty.
All these problems come from the changes in temperature that are making the weather patterns change creating drought, flood, dry season, etc.
During the dry season African rivers dry quickly and lead to lose of biodiversity; Animals that before were more abundant are now disappearing like the elephants and lions due to this problem; Lands that farmers used to plant are more difficult to be used, because is very difficult to know the exact time of planting because of the inconstant climate.
Another problem is that the capital city is overcrowded and because of the big population there is a lot of deforestation.


4.    LEGAL FRAMEWORK (Treaties, UN resolutions, official declarations, etc.)
Sierra Leone as I said before is a very poor country, and because of that, they need help to control the problems of the climate changes but there is little evidence of international donor support. A single project - the development of “climate-proofed” is going to start until 2011. The government of Sierra Leone has expressed frustration at the slow pace of assistance by those countries responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions.
Because Sierra Leone is a country that is affected and will be strongly affected by this problem, the governments of the country have reacted to this and they are now members of some organizations that help to solve this problem. ICCt (International Council on Clean Transportation), OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons), UNWTO (United Nations World Tourist Organization) and WMO World Meteorological Organization), are the organizations that as i said, are now helping to reduce the consequences of the climate changes.

Captain Bob Tarrant, Commanding Officer of a Royal Navy, has disclosed to pressmen that it is apparent that climate change will affect Sierra Leone harshly within the next 10 to 15 years. During a press briefing on Friday 5th September 2008 onboard the HMS Endurance ship, the Captain intimated that the country will in the not too distant future experience hotter temperature and a reduction in rainfall, due to what he referred to as human activities, especially scientific actions and widespread deforestation.” (Awareness Times)
5.    POSITION (What is your country´s perspective on the issue?)
We think that because rich countries are the one who usually contribute about 75% of greenhouse emissions in to the atmosphere and we, the poor countries only contribute about 3.6% (Community biodiversity development and conservation program in Africa report - 2008) and usually feel the majority of climate change impacts, we think that we should get some help from other countries or organizations and that what some of them are doing.
6.    PROPOSAL (What does your country propose to solve or improve the issued that is being discussed)
A single project - the development of “climate-proofed” is going to start until 2011. The government of Sierra Leone has expressed frustration at the slow pace of assistance by those countries responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions.

sábado, 25 de septiembre de 2010

OFICIAL NAME

The Republic of Sierra Leone

FLAG

MAP

ECONOMIC

Sierra Leone is an extreme poor nation in Africa with a big inequality in income distribution.
GDP ( 2009 est.) $2,064 billion
GBP per capital ( 2009 est.) $900
GINI index (last registered in 1989) 62.9
Exports (2009 est.) : $205.9 million. Diamonds, bauxite, coffe, cocoa and fish.
Imports (2009 est.): $372.4 million. food stuff, machinery and equipment, fuel and lubricants, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, building materialsand textiles.
Trade Partners (2009 est.): USA, China, UK, India, France, Netherlands and Belgium.

GOVERNMENT

It is a constitutional republic democracy with and elected president and unicameral parliament.
The government is divided into 3 parts. The excecutive branch which is formed by a president that is elected fevery years; legislative branch with a unicameral parliment with 124 seats. They are as well electedevery five years; and the Judicial branch formed by a Supreme Court.
Current gonvernment officials: Ernest Bai KOROMA since September 17th 2007

CULTURE

Population (2010 est.): 5,132,138
Ethnicities: There are 20 african ethnical groups in Sierra Leone.
Literacy rate: 35.1% of the population can read and write in english, arabic, mende or temne.
Religion: 60% of the population is muslim, 30% indigenous beliefs and 10% christian.

INTERNATINAL RELATIONS

Sierra Leone has very good relations with a lot of countries, specially USA, and it is a member of the UN and its special agencies like FAO, WMO and WHO; and other organizations such as the Commonwealth Organization, AFDB(African Development Bank), AU( African Union), ECOWAS( Economic Community of West African States), and WTO ( World Trade Organization).

HISTORY

Sierra Leone who was before known as Romarong, was first occupied by the ethnical groups sherbro, temne, kono, limba and mende. In 1462, the portuguese landend in this place and decided to call it Lion Mountains. After this until 1792, it became a very important centre of transatlantic trade in slave. In 1808 it became a British Crown Colony and in 1896 half of the country became British protectorate. But in 1961 they both combine and fought for independence so that in 2000 they became the Sierra Leone.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Africa. Sierra Leone. September 23rd 2010. http://www.africa.com/sierra_leone
European Commission. Environment. Climate Change. September 26th 2010. http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/home_en.htm
U.S Environmental Protection Agency. Climate change. September 28th 2010. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/
Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE). What is climate change?. September 26th 2010. http://www.climatechange.vic.gov.au/Greenhouse/wcmn302.nsf/childdocs/-BA39AAA009DEED19CA25702D00154534?open
The discovery of global warming. Rapid Climate Change. September 26th 2010. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm
Baptiste Press. United Nations climate panel 'one-sided,' prof says. September 28th 2010 http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/BPnews.asp?ID=33756
The Sierra Leone Web. September 29th  2010. http://www.sierra-leone.org/
Awareness Times. Climate change to affect Sierra Leone. September 29. http://news.sl/drwebsite/exec/view.cgi?archive=5&num=9701http://www.climatefrontlines.org/en-GB/taxonomy/term/386
Climate frontlines. Sierra Leone. September 29th   2010.http://www.climatefrontlines.org/en-GB/taxonomy/term/386

OneWorld. Climate change in Sierra Leone. September 29th  2010. http://uk.oneworld.net/guides/sierra_leone/climate-change
U.S Departament of State. Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. Background Note: Sierra Leone. September 22nd 2010. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5475.htm#econ
Central Intelligence Agency. Sierra Leone.Last updated Agoust 19 2010. September 22nd 2010. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sl.html